The year 2006 was a turning point in economic history. The read-only Internet was eclipsed by the new, participatory Web. The knowledge, resources, and computing power of millions of innovative thinkers now able to come together. This is Wikinomics, the economic (business) model for generating value based on community, mass collaboration, sharing and self organization.
Energized through blogs, wikis, chat rooms, personal broadcasting (podcasting), mashups and other forms of peer-to-peer content, creation and communication, a decentralized and amorphous force increasingly self-organizes to provide news, entertainment, and services. This energy is growing to widely permeate the economy and has major implications as it intersects with globalization.
Wikinomics represents a rise of an entirely new economy where totally new organizational structures can co-create value with millions of autonomous producers to challenge traditional business designs. Corporations working within outdated Capitalistic models no longer rule supreme. Peer-to-peer mass collaboration has birthed a new era in which all can participate and add value to both small and large-scale economic systems in ways that were burdensome prior to the Internet. For large companies, seven models of mass collaboration provide ways to harness external knowledge, resources, and talent for greater competitiveness. For small companies, new technologies allow for competitive advantages over larger competitors. For society as a whole, the explosion of knowledge, collaboration, and innovation is already spurring economic development and the creation of richer, fuller lives for all. And most encouragingly, for the earth, truly sustainable technologies are collaboratively being developed to allow human life to continue to exist.
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Summary: Peer production is a revolutionary new mode of value creation that harnesses the power of mass collaboration. Linux, MySpace, and Wikipedia are pioneering examples, but potential to exploit extends to virtually all information-based products and services, and increasingly physical things. What can we learn from the “peer pioneers” and where is this phenomenon headed next? How can companies collaborate with self-organizing communities to innovate faster and better than their competitors? What are the risks and how should companies manage them? What are your predictions for how peer production will play out in your company or sector?
(People work together to make things, web things and real things. How can we work together, better?)
A new global marketplace for ideas, innovations, and uniquely qualified minds is thriving outside the boundaries of traditional firms. Companies that leverage these ideagoras can tap a global pool of talent, ideas, and innovations that vastly exceeds what they could ever hope to marshal internally. How can firms harness ideagoras to deliver superior value creation, growth, and competitiveness? Is your company equipped to harness a truly global “on-demand” workforce? How should firms reconfigure their innovation processes to take advantage of the rapid growth of talent in India, China and other emerging markets? Are there examples of ideagoras you're aware of that were not discussed in the book?
(We can now get other people's ideas from the web. Where can we ask our questions on the web?)
Many firms equate prosumption with “customer centricity,” where companies decide what the basics are and customers get to modify certain elements. Today, a younger, more connected generation of producer-consumers is one of the groups that is revolutionizing the way companies relate to their customers. In the new model, prosumers add value throughout the product life cycle, starting with design and extending to after market opportunities for customer-driven commerce and innovation. What are the latest prosumption examples? How can companies take advantage of this phenomenon? What role should companies play in online “prosumer communities” where customers gather to swap tools, tips, and product hacks?
(Customers use products their way. How can we find out what they are doing?)
A new age of collaborative science is emerging that will accelerate scientific discovery and learning. In fact, leading scientific observers expect more change in the next fifty years of science than in the last four hundred years of inquiry. As new forms of mass collaboration take root in the scientific community, smart companies have an opportunity to completely rethink how they do science, and even how they compete. How should companies engage with large-scale scientific networks? How do firms win by sharing? How will collaborative science transform the interface between science and innovation? Are web 2.0 technologies being leveraged in your scientific field or community?
(Trained scientists and everyone else can do "science" on the web. How can we find and share with other scientists?)
Conventional wisdom says that companies should fiercely protect their intellectual property with patents, trademarks, and copyrights. Today, a growing number of firms are discovering that some of their most important business assets are actually more valuable when they are open. Companies such as Amazon, Google, and SAP increase the speed, scope, and success of innovation by opening up their products and IT infrastructures to create vibrant business ecosystems with thousands of co-innovators. What can other companies learn from these lighthouse cases and how can they develop platforms for innovation of their own? What products do you think have the potential to make great platforms for innovation? How, when, and where should companies open up these products or infrastructures? What's the secret to attracting an energetic group of people and partners to share the innovation load?
(Companies are sharing some of their secrets. How can we work with these companies?)
The quintessential multinational was modeled on a hub-and-spoke architecture. Today, smart firms are moving to a new model—a truly global firm that breaks down national silos, deploys resources and capabilities globally, and harnesses the power of human capital across borders and organizational boundaries. In fact, the rise to planetary ecosystems for designing and building physical goods marks a new phase in the evolution of mass collaboration. To what extent can peer production models be leveraged in the domain of physical things? How can enterprises take advantage of global sourcing, develop global brands, and make enterprise architecture, business processes, knowledge management and collaboration seamless on a global basis? How is your organization dealing with the challenges of thinking and acting globally?
(Everywhere in the world, people are working better. How can we help them? How can they help us?)
The new Web revolutionizes media, culture, and the economy. It is reshaping organizations and workplaces in a profound way. Peer production and co-creation are not just happening in online communities and networks like MySpace, Linux, and Wikipedia. Increasingly employees are using blogs, wikis, and other new tools to collaborate and form ad hoc communities across departmental and organizational boundaries. How will the Net Generation transform the culture, structure, and economics of the workplace? And how can companies leverage blogs, wikis, and other nascent collaboration tools to harness insights and resources from inside and outside the firm? Are you using blogs, wikis, and other collaboration tools in your workplace?
(People are writing and publishing together. How can we write with them?)
Managing Intellectual Property in Peer Production Communities
The challenges of managing intellectual property in peer collaboration environments are not well understood. Conventional approaches to IP protection inhibit widespread participation in value creation by centralizing ownership and control over knowledge. More community-oriented IP models such as the general public license (GPL), on the other hand, may limit the long-term viability of a peer production community by tightly restricting opportunities for commercialization and therefore preventing individual contributors from monetizing their contributions. This preliminary guide to intellectual property in the age of large-scale collaborations presents some frameworks for thinking about the problems and opportunities.
(Everyone is thinking up new ideas. How can we share the wealth that these new ideas produce?)
Wikinomics focuses mainly, though not exclusively, on how mass collaboration is transforming business. Our research reveals that mass collaboration and the democratization of value creation is transforming all institutions in society, including the arts and sciences, education, non-profit organizations, and government. If you're currently working in one of these fields, why not write about how mass collaboration has the potential to change how your organization or sector operates? What current examples can you provide? What are the benefits of increasing participation in these sectors? Is there a darkside?
(Churches, schools and governments need help. How can we use the web to help them?)
Mass Collaboration Beyond individual Disciplines
Current collaborations are largely restricted to those possessing a common pool of knowledge, accepted means of communications and fact-checking, and common goals. But there is the possibility of the evolution of a universal communication language, through the unification of the ideas in various disciplines. This notion of unification is nothing new for science. All of the various breakthroughs in science involved the unification of previously disparate disciplines (electricity and magnetism for example), or the development of common bases and notation (axiomatic set theory in mathematics) that could describe a much larger set of ideas. Thus, the mass collaboration unleashed by the Internet can become much more massive and fluid--as the distinctions between different disciplines become blurred through a common language for communication and fact-checking. While there appears to be some progress in this direction, it is not clear what this language of the future will be.
Religion in the Age of Mass Collaboration
Although the existence and eternal nature of God is debated by theologians and scientists alike, there is little question that the institutions of religion are quite subject to change and evolution through the years.
They are not immune from the changing forces of technology and cultural shift, examples being the changes wrought by the combination of the Renaissance and the Reformation, Gutenberg's printing press and the King James version of the Christian Bible. From the perspective of a more precise debate of religious questions, and from that of a greater variety of individual religious experimentation, these changes may be considered beneficial. From hindsight, we can see that these changes are similar to those taking place today. Greater understanding grew out of a greater standardization of terminology (all of those intellectuals knew Latin or Greek, or both) and greater communication between communities, due in part to the reduction in cost of communication, and in part to a reduction to the dangers of travel but on much slower time scales than today. Hence, existing interests whose power was threatened by the changes could resist them by force. That sort of resistance is much more difficult today in most of the world, because of the speed of the changes.
The Reformation, for example, resulted in several groups of individuals experimenting with their interpretations of religion, and developing different convictions in spite of the violence used against them; the consequent dilution of centralized authority due to repeated schisms, and therefore of the reduction of violence to enforce religious beliefs over several hundred years.
Because of the absence of rigid hierarchy, the Jews have been much more free to interpret their theologies, though they retain some shared beliefs on what constitutes religious practice. This has happened to a lesser extent in Protestant Christianity, and to a far lesser extent in Roman Catholicism and Islam outside of the Sufis. But these phenomena have already happened several times over in China and India--and the process of schism appears there to be institutionalized. You have several Gurus or Masters, each with their own following, and systems of personal beliefs. But they all share a common understanding of what actions are moral. These phenomena appear simple to explain--that access to political power hinders the growth of religious practice as political power may depend upon a certain interpretation.
Rigid hierarchy and secrecy have already wreaked havoc on the Roman Catholic church in the past decade. The violence and hateful rhetoric coming from fundamentalist factions within both Islam and Christianity are causing many to seek spiritual development outside of theological systems that are primarily closed and exclusive. At the same time, the number and diversity of religious organizations is growing exponentially, as Web 2.0 technology makes it relatively easy for producers of spirituality to connect with like-minded consumers.
In the American mid-west, this phenomenon is known is "church shopping"--an interesting metaphor that blends spirituality with economics. Perhaps the next phase will be one where there is little or no distinction between producers and consumers of religion. Current examples of this trend range from house-churches and house shrines to religious blogs and podcasts.
(All sorts of ideas might be related. How can we use ideas from one area to help get new ideas for another?)
Care to make suggestions about the wikinomics playbook and the wiki itself?
Page Last Updated: Jan 5 2:28pm by Neil Jacobs
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